"Vertical integration" will be heard often in 2013. There is no shortage of developers and companies asserting that the "distribution of a collection of disparate chunks of software" model is holding Linux back. Instead, they want to create a system following an overall design from top to bottom. The market performance of platforms like Android suggests that success may be found this way; now we have projects like GNOME OS, Firefox OS, and Ubuntu following similar paths. This kind of integration may well lead to a slicker result, but it also risks fragmenting the Linux world in a way that the traditional distributions did not.

This push toward vertical integration has generated a fair amount of conflict in our community; that will continue into 2013. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the strongest criticisms are reserved for those who are trying hardest to do this integration work as a community project rather than a company-controlled commercial product. As the Android developers have discovered, it can be a lot easier to just design a top-to-bottom system behind closed doors and release the result later. If we wish to minimize the fragmentation risk, we might want to engage more fully — and more constructively — with those who are doing their integration work in the open.

We have discussed a lot about this vertical integration. My positive stand about Systemd got fired at (often in a very personal way), perhaps mostly because I just expressed feelings not arguments. The only argument I have: complex systems require all kind of integration.
Corbets important notion (to my humble opinion) is, these attempts of vertical integration go their way, because they are the most promising for commercial success. Systemd just is the most open and most generic attempt!

Questions remaining:
Will there be one way of integration accepted as a Linux standard - a kind of commodity agreement?
Will Gentoo participate?_________________fun2gen2

This is an interesting topic. I think Android succeeded because it was the only commercially viable linux in its target market. Of course it does compete with Windows and Ios, but it is the only active linux in its market. I think vertical integration works in markets where it won't have to compete with itself.

Anything where a specific target market is... umm... targeted.... But generalized markets like PC's where there are tens of commercially viable linux drstros is where it falls flat on its face.

Hopefully in 2013 we'll see Red Hat buy out a major proprietary software vendor just so they can release their products under the GPL.

If Linux can gain a real competitive advantage in (for example) video editing software, something that gets mentioned in every news article about Linux, we will get a lot more converts than if
existing software is "vertically integrated".

If Linux can gain a real competitive advantage in (for example) video editing software, something that gets mentioned in every news article about Linux, we will get a lot more converts than if existing software is "vertically integrated".

I guess the main reason Linux not having a great video software:
Not having a general accepted standard software stack _________________fun2gen2